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Background to Tongan Society at the Time of Captain Cook’S Visits

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Background to Tongan Society at the Time of Captain Cook’S Visits CHAPTER III BACKGROUND TO TONGAN SOCIETY AT THE TIME OF CAPTAIN COOK’S VISITS I want now to give a Tongan view of the myths, legends, and tradi­ tional stories that are cited as history or explanations of Tonga as Cook saw it. I shall first describe various myths of origin and then give an account of the Tu‘i Tonga, his court, andha‘a the derived from his line, then of the Tu‘i Ha‘atakalaua and ha‘athe derived from it, and finally the Tu‘i Kanokupolu andha‘a the and titles derived from it. THE TU‘I TONGA Origin Myths The origin myths of Tonga, and especially the origin myth concerning the Tu‘i Tonga, throw a good deal of light on Tongan ideas about their political system.22 In the beginning, the first inhabitants of Tonga are said to have come from the sky and from the underworld, the men from the sky, the women from the underworld. There is no myth of migration from a distant land. It is said that one of the five Tangaloa gods came down from the sky to see whether there was any land in the region where Tonga now stands. He reported to another Tangaloa in the sky that there was nothing there except a shoal. On each subsequent trip the shoal became shallower, until it was a bar of sand, and finally a sandy island. This was the island of ‘Ata near Tongatapu. When the Tangaloa gods heard that there was nothing but a shoal, Tangaloa-Tufunga ‘Tangaloa-Carpenter’ poured chips and scraps from his workshop on to the region of the earth and created the island of ‘Eua. Another Tangaloa sent down some vegetation for the island of ‘Ata, but there were still no people. The first three men of the island were created by a Tangaloa who broke off a piece of the root of a vine, thus turning it into a maggot. Then he broke the maggot in two, and each part became a man. One was called Ko Hai ‘Who is it?’ and the other was called Ko Au ‘It is I’. A third bit stuck to his beak, and that became the third man. His name was Momo ‘Fragment’. These three men lived on ‘Ata, but they had no women with them. Then several of the Maui came from the underworld. They went to Manuka (Manu‘a in Samoa) where they found Tonga Fusifonua ‘Tonga the Land-Fisher’, a mythical being with a special fishhook that he was 89 90 AN ACCOUNT OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TONGA using to fish lands up out of the sea. One Maui tricked Tonga into giving them the hook, and promised to name the first land they fished up Tonga, in remembrance of him. They made a trial first to see whether they had been given the right hook, and fished up Tokelau. Then they moved up and fished up their first real land, and named it Tonga. This is the island of Tongatapu. At the same time they discovered the island of ‘Ata with its three solitary men, and promised to go back to the under­ world to bring them some women. Having done so, they busied themselves in pulling up more islands—Ha‘apai, Vava‘u, Niua, and the other islands of Samoa besides Manuka. The high islands—such as Kao and Late—were thrown down from the sky. By this time the land was there and the people were multiplying. Ko Hai is said to have been the first Tu‘i Tonga, and Ko Au the second. On an island near Tonga there was a gianttoa tree that one lord of heaven, Tangaloa ‘Eitumatupu‘a, used to climb down to the earth. On one of his trips he slept with a lovely Tongan woman, Va‘epopua, and she gave birth to a son, ‘Aho‘eitu. ‘Eitumatupu‘a went back to heaven, leaving his son on earth with his mother. When the boy grew up he wanted to see his father, so his mother told him about the tree. He climbed up and found his father, who greeted him with joy and prepared food for him. ‘Eitumatupu‘a had other, older sons with heavenly mothers. These sons were living in heaven with him, and he sent ‘Aho‘eitu out unaccom­ panied to see them. They were jealous of ‘Aho‘eitu because of his beauty and his skill in a game he played with them, and so they killed and ate him. When ‘Eitumatupu'a could not find ‘Aho‘eitu, he summoned his sons and accused them of harming him, but they said they were innocent. But the father did not believe them. He ordered a large wooden bowl to be brought, and made them vomit into it. The bowl was filled with flesh and blood. Then the brothers confessed, and brought the head and the bones and put them into the bowl with the flesh and blood. A little water was poured in as well, and then the whole was covered with leaves of nonu (Morinda citrifolia which is still used for healing). After a time all the parts reunited and ‘Aho‘eitu sat up in the bowl. Then the father sum­ moned ‘Aho‘eitu and all the older brothers to come before him. He told them that ‘Aho‘eitu would go down to Tonga and would become Tu‘i Tonga, replacing the line of Ko Hai and Ko Au, but the brothers of ‘Aho‘eitu would have to stay behind. Affection awoke in the breasts of the brothers, and they wept for what they had done. Later these brothers followed the Tu‘i Tonga, and became his attendants on earth. The eldest, Talafale, was told by his father that he would be Tu‘ifaleua, king of the second house, so if ‘Aho‘eitu’s line failed, his descendants would become the Tu‘i Tonga. But he could not become Tu‘i Tonga himself because he TONGAN SOCIETY AT THE TIME OF COOK’S VISIT 91 had committed murder. The other four brothers formed the Tu‘i Tonga’s first Falefa ‘House of Four’: Matakehe, Maliepo, Tu'iloloko, and Tu‘ifolaha. The first two were to guard the Tu‘i Tonga, and the second two were to help him to govern and to conduct his funeral.23 One of the interesting things in this myth is that it was the youngest son who became king. In the normal course of events this would not happen in Tonga, for it was usually an elder son (or a brother) who succeeded to a title. But a more important principle overrode that of seniority, and that was that ‘Aho‘eitu’s mother was a woman of the earth, whereas the mothers of the other brothers were women of heaven. ‘Aho‘eitu became the ruler among the people of the earth because he had the support of his mother and her people. His brothers had no claim on the loyalties of the earth people. Queen Salote stressed that this same situation was acted out time and time again in Tongan history—it was the mother’s people who gave support to an aspiring chief, and if they were not strong he had little chance of success. It was difficult for a chief to get an established follow­ ing on a new island unless his mother came from that island, or unless he himself married women from the island. Relations with the mother’s people were usually more friendly and cordial than relations with the father’s people (see Chapter II, “ Rank and Authority”), and one could ask for assistance from the mother’s people much more readily and without worrying about repaying them. The origin myth expresses another basic principle of Tongan social and political life, namely, that brothers of the same father were supposed to love and honour one another, but, in fact, they were likely to be jealous. In the myth the jealousy is openly expressed. In reality it was often suppressed and hidden, but all the same it was there. It would never do for close brothers to quarrel or murder each other, but they might get others to do the dirty work for them. In fact, other myths continue to express this theme, for it is said several subsequent Tu‘i Tonga were murdered, and it was people of the line of Tu‘ifaleua who were respon­ sible. They did not always do it themselves, but they were behind the assassinations of the Tu‘i Tonga. Legends of the Early Tu'i Tonga In the early days, the Tu‘i Tonga was evidently both a secular and a sacred ruler, that is, he managed the day-to-day government of the country, but he was also the intermediary between the people and the gods. Very little is known about these early Tu‘i Tonga. There are hardly any legends about the ones in between ‘Aho‘eitu and Momo, the tenth one. One cannot even be sure how many of the Tu‘i Tonga there were in the line, for the lists differ. Gifford (1929:50) lists 39. A list published in 92 AN ACCOUNT OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TONGA Koe Boobooi in 1877 has 48.24 This list is based on the Tamaha’s, but was corrected by Lupepau‘u, her brother Veale‘ovale, and Hepisipa.25 It appears, however, as if these early Tu‘i Tonga lived inland on the island of Tongatapu, roughly in the region where Toloa is now. In the time of Momo, said to have been the tenth Tu‘i Tonga, the Tu‘i Tonga’s residence was moved to Heketa on the north-east coast of the island, probably where the Ha‘amonga ‘a Maui stands, and it is said it was the aggressiveness of the people of Tu‘ifaleua that caused this move, as the descendants of Talafale lived in the area where Pelehake is now (i.e., not far from Toloa).
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